Thursday, February 18, 2010

• •BioShock 2 captures world of rapture with art deco design, period ..., Atlas Shrugged|The Fountainhead|Capitalism|One of the appeals of 2K Games’ “BioShock” videogame is a complex storyline, which was influenced by Ayn Rand novels like “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead.” In “Atlas Shrugged,” Rand writes about a dystopian world where innovators like business leaders and artists go on an organized strike and disappear to protest an oppressive society. Similarly, BioShock is about Rapture, a fictional underworld city that was designed in 1946 as a utopia for the intellectual elite, who fled an oppressed society above land, only to see Rapture also break down.

Sunday, November 22, 2009

• • •Ayn Rand’s Hollywood years, Altruism|Ayn Rand Institute|The Fountainhead|We The Living|Personal life|Image|Video|Interview with Ayn Rand biographer Anne C. Heller.If Ayn Rand was criticized for writing unrealistic plot lines and one-dimensional characters in her novels, she likely took inspiration from her background: Rand spent her early years in America as a Hollywood screenwriter. In a fortuitous bit of timing, the Russian émigré met director Cecil B. DeMille two days after arriving in Los Angeles, in 1926, and was soon on the set of his biblical epic, “King of Kings.” DeMille hired Rand as a junior screenwriter, and she was paid $25 a week to work on scripts like “His Dog,”a piece of studio fluff about an ex-con reformed through love for his pooch.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

The Fountainhead|And the Howard Roark Award Goes To…: A Santa Monica-based architect, Tommy Landau, is developing plans for what would be the world’s tallest building –- a 224-story, eco-conscious skyscraper in Abu Dhabi.